How the RaDonda Case Changed Nursing in 2022.
No one can deny that healthcare professionals study hard and long to work in this field. The need to help others is strong with this population because of the difficult journey it takes to get a healthcare job. On the outside looking in, the healthcare system is something you depend on when you are really needing help with your health. It makes sense. Over time though, this system has grown bigger and bigger. Down deep, the health care machine has been modified for extreme money making. It takes advantage of the intuitive and caring need nurses (and doctors) want to provide. It does this by creating these burdening and vulnerable workflows to capitalize on their efforts. There is so much stress around delivering patient care that these human beings who wanted to work in nursing are leaving. They are leaving with PTSD, trauma, and other health issues related to stress. The risks to do nursing often times outweigh the altruistic need to help people. The stress wreaks havoc on the mind and body.
Stress is a killer.
Now add in lawsuits. This is a story about a nurse that should have been a civil lawsuit than a criminal one. When nurses get sued (and they do often) they get called into a Civil Lawsuit. Lawsuits with healthcare professionals are done in Civil court because it’s a small group or individual person that seeks punishment on the caretaker(s). Criminal Lawsuit is when someone believes that there’s a nurse menacing society as a whole and must be punished. So, it’s natural that when a nurse gets sued, it would go through a Civil Lawsuit.
Let’s talk about RaDonda. The case that has affected healthcare this year.
RaDonda is a nurse who mistakenly gave a patient a medication that killed them. Every hospital has some level of safety nets to prevent this, but RaDonda autopiloted her way around them. In a fast-paced environment, this happens actually quite often. In this situation though, the hospital attempted to hide this mistake RaDonda did after she had reported her error. The family didn’t find out until someone from the hospital reported the mistake to the Tennessee DA. Nurses are taught to report any Near Error, Error, or Missed Error as soon as it happens. RaDonda reported her error immediately after she realized she done it. The hospital settled with the family once they found out. The Nashville DA though ringed RaDonda through a Criminal Lawsuit. She was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years. The nursing community have responded in ways as anyone would expect. Travel Nurses that knew about the RaDonda case refused to work for that particular hospital. Permanent staff also started to leave.
Why do nurses begin to leave or refuse to work for that hospital that RaDonda worked at? The answer is this, the Hospital tried covering up RaDonda’s error. The hospital went through great effort to prevent media attention to RaDonda. In the end, RaDonda still was used as the catch all for the error despite her honesty in reporting it. No one else (that I know of) was punished.
What does this mean to other nurses? This wasn’t the first criminal case involving a bedside nurse, but it had sent a strong message to nurses. You mess up somewhere, don’t report. Instead of having malpractice insurance cover court expenses, you’ll go to jail for errors or in this case, reporting your own error. There is no benefit or safety in being honest as a nurse now. Tennessee showed the world that being honest about your mistake does not prevent your demise.
If people only knew that all the effort to help people at a professional level could mean being dragged through court, sent to jail, and have their whole life torn apart, not many people would take the job risk. The action of this DA had kicked that domino straight downhill for not only nurses, but everyone in healthcare. Perfection is now a requirement to care. Nurses are even more vulnerable to the very people that step into the hospital for care. Why take the risk? There are plenty of other jobs out there that are less stressful. Many nurses choose to ignore the risks because they are confident that their potential to make a deadly mistake are too low.
During Covid (still ongoing), an up-rise trend of lawsuits are happening. The toll on the healthcare system in place has only burdened nurses emotionally, physically drained them, and were treated poorly on all sides. As a response, less and less people are willing to risk being destroyed by the very people that they are trying to help. Insurance prices increase, more documentation requirements and more difficult work environments will continue to rise in effort to protect healthcare organizations (and not nurses). The many issues that nurses face are the number of holes in swiss cheese. Patient care will suffer as these efforts increase and less people are willing to do this line of work.
Communities are digressing from it’s government shut-downs as Covid becomes less life-stopping. The world of healthcare has been left scarred by all sides in the chaos that Covid brought. Without increasing staffing across the board, placing legal protections for those working in healthcare, and reducing the cost of care…we may see an end to what nursing care is today. There may be a day that you will have to care for your own family like people did before nursing was a thing.
Read our next Medium post to know what we think about the inner workings of our healthcare industry. Come visit our website, www.theblatantnurse.com.
Legal: This is purely opinion post. Please form your own conclusion, opinion or whatever you want, but do not use this article to support an negligible action. If the above statements are inaccurate, then you may discontinue reading this at anytime.